Prospective Graduate Students

My Career Path

This is a question l am asked alot by the undergraduates I mentor. They tell me it is helpful to hear me talk about my path to this career. Thus, I share it here in hopes it will also be somewhat helpful to others. I share it with some reluctance for a variety of reasons. First, it feels a bit self-indulgent, but moreso as it presents just one possible journey that may or may not be relevant. I humbly acknowledge that my path -- as do most -- reflects a large amount of randomness. As you'll read, there are a number of places where I was incredibly fortunate and privileged to be helped by the kindness of others. I that spirit, I want to humbly recognize all of those who played roles in getting me to this place. 

My Origin Story

I grew up in Portage, Indiana, which was a blue collar, steel-mill town on the southern tip of Lake Michigan. This area of the state, known as the Region, is basically an extension of Chicago's suburban sprawl. Both of my parents were first-generation college graduates and were educators in our local school system. As such, the value of education and its capacity to allow socioeconomic mobility was clearly instilled in me. I was also extremely fortunate to have amazing parents who supported me fully and provided me with opportunities to grow and learn. 

From an early age I identified a "scientist" as a possible career. Well, I think its more honest to say that I saw it as a great retirement plan after my career in the NBA, MLB, NFL -- or all of the above! Early in high school I learned about the science of psychology and was immediately intrigued by this field that investigated "why do people do what they do?" I was very fortunate that Portage High School offered a class on psychology and got to learn even more about it from Mr. John DeCoster. At this point I was hooked on the idea of wanting a career involving psychology. Around this time I also awakened to the reality that my chances of playing professional sports were quickly dimming. So when I heard about the job of a "sport psychologist" who used their training to help athletes perform better and this seemed like a dream combination of my interests. I dreamt of someday serving as the team psychologist for the Chicago Bulls or Chicago White Sox. 

I remained firmly along this path as I moved on to Indiana University to major in psychology. I took as many psych and sociology classes as I could -- noticing that I enjoyed the class in Personality alot more than I did Behavioral Neuroscience. I proceeded along believing that I was doing all I could to prepare myself for eventually going to graduate school. 

Wait....I Need Research Experience? 

That all changed in the fall of my Junior year when I was taking a 1-credit hour course called "planning your psychology career" which was required for majors. Dr. Linda B. Smith was presenting on the various things that you needed to get into graduate school and this is when I first learned that gaining experience working in research labs was critical to getting into doctoral programs. Uh oh! This was news to me and to that point hadn't even know this was an option to consider. 

Following this lecture I immediately emailed Dr. Smith, saying how thankful I was to have learned this and asked if she knew how I might go about getting into a research lab. She kindly explained that given my interests there would be other faculty to whom I should reach out. Unfortunately, after speaking to them I didn't find a great fit and remained no closer to landing a research position. At this point I emailed Dr. Smith again explaining the situation and asking if she might have any space for me as a research assistant in her lab. To my great fortune, she graciously agreed to have me join her lab. Dr. Smith's is a world-renowned developmental psychologist, whose work focused on infant word learning. This topic was a far cry from my own interests, but I did my best to learn and hope that my coding of mother-infant dyadic videos contributed to that work. I will be forever grateful for her kindness and mentorship as I applied to grad school. Looking back on her graciousness, it inspires me to be helpful to students who come to me for help with navigating these complexities.

Building on my work in the Smith lab, I was fortunate to also gain experience in the lab of Dr. Geoff Bingham, a cognitive psychologist who studied visual perception. I also was incredibly fortunate to work with Dr. Jack Raglin, a professor in Kinesiology, who had taught my class on Sport Psychology and had done research on the phenomenon of overtaining in athletes. His advice and mentorship on pursuing my dream of sport psychology was immensely helpful. Interestingly, he advised me not to follow his own path -- into a program in Kinesiology - but instead to pursue Clinical Psychology. The reason being that a clinical degree with leave me prepared to work with athletes not just on their athletic performance, but on any number of mental health conditions that might be affecting it. From there, despite my late start, I felt well positioned to apply to Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs in the fall. 

Preparing to Apply to Grad School

As this time came closer, I was able to track down a few programs that seemed a genuinely good fit for my interests in that they had faculty in Clinical Psychology who had experience working with athletes. The dream school was the University of Washington, where Dr. Ron Smith was doing research on sport psychology and had established and official practicum placement for doctoral clinicians to work within the Department of Athletics. Another spot that looked very intriguing was the University of Memphis where Dr. James Whelan and Dr. Andrew Meyers, were clinical faculty members who were working directly with athletes. 

Here though I must admit to a major misstep that is unfortunately all too common among students applying. Not finding additional programs that were ideal, but knowing I needed to apply to more, I consulted the US News and Word Report Top 20 psychology departments. Much to my current chagrin, I further narrowed this list by selecting those programs with notable athletic programs (think: UCLA, North Carolina, Wisconsin) and then tried to find professors that best fit my interests within them. This is a downright terrible strategy and I implore students reading this to do better! More commonly I see geography as the focus, with a student thinking something along the lines of "well, living in the Boston are would be fun, so I'll apply to Harvard and Boston College." There is absolutely nothing wrong with having geographic preferences, but applying without a clear sense of how the program's and mentor's interests align with your own is just throwing the application fees out the window. Ultimately I think I applied to between 6 and 8 programs, but the vast majority were doomed from the start. 

Following applications, I remained in touch with Dr. Ron Smith at the University of Washington. He was waiting to see if funding would be available for him to admit a student, but that he wasn't sure. Unfortunately, later in the process I learned that funding was NOT available, but he encouraged me to apply again the following year if I was still looking. 

A Pivotal Moment

Quite late in the process in 2001, probably in April from what I recall, I did get contacted by Dr. Whelan at the University of Memphis and he invited me down to visit them on campus. Excitedly, I made for a 6.5 hour drive down to visit. I was able to stay with some of his graduate students and get to spend a day on the campus. During my interview my conversation with Dr. Whelan that proved to be among the most influential of my professional career. In it he explained that while he would be interested in mentoring me in their program, I would need to know that the research would be mainly focused on gambling as this was where his work was heading. He related that he could (and would) train me to do sport psychology, it wouldn't be reasonable for this to be a primary focus as he wasn't confident I could find a job doing it. He explained that the professional role was not yet well-accepted and wouldn't put me in the position for secure employment (as an aside, he authored a paper on this topic the same year! Link). The influential part of this conversation followed me explaining that while I thought gambling addition was interesting, I didn't think I had a passion for it and that I truly wanted to pursue the passion for sport psychology. 

In that conversation Dr. Whelan told me that the path I should follow was to first become an expert on some substantive topic and THEN apply it to sports performance. When he asked me what topic that might be, my mind immediately went to personality. I had long wondered how different personality traits might be more or less helpful to athletes in certain sports, or even roles within sports. Based on that, he then advised me to get expertise on understanding and assessing personality traits and then see if I could eventually apply it to sports. I took his advice. 

While taking this advice meant waiting another year to reapply, I now had what I saw as two vaiable paths forward. First, I would hope that an opportunity to work directly in sports migth open up -- such as at Washington -- or that I could pursue my passion for personality and hope to later transition into using that to understand athletic performance. 

Taking a Gap Year

Following my college graduation I took time for some fun, as a group of myself and 5 other friends from my hometown took a 17-day road trip that featured stops at 13 Major League Baseball games. Once we were back I took the GRE and then picked up the job search in earnest. Not having had success in finding a research-relevant position, I began working part time in the computer department at Best Buy and soon after that added a full-time job working for "Home Equity of America," a subsidiary of Fifth Third Bank that processed loan applications. There I was gainfully employed with benefits, by in the most mundane work -- examining physical loan application packets to ensure all that papers was in order and signed in the correct places. It was incredibly boring work. In a bit of a Forrest Gump moment, I worked there during the hey-day of home equity loans and aggressive refinancing. During this time I learned about terms such as "Jumbo" loans and "5 year ARMs." I recall asking some of the sales people to explain it to me and then wondering: "wasn't it a bit risky for them to take on so much debt, with a rate that would  to be refinanced in 5 years? Wouldn't it be a big problem if the home's value went down or if the rates went up?" Certainly not, I was told, becuase of course home prices have always went up and rates would likely be similar...... Watch the movie The Big Short to find out how that story ended for many of those loans.

Personal Connections lead to a Priveleged Break

Only a month or so into this new job things were shifted dramatically when a much more interesting job came along. It is here that I will point out a huge piece of privelege that benefitted me and likely helped shape the rest of my academic journey. My paternal uncle Tom was an adminsitrator at the University of Kentucky and wisely advised that I should get more research experience in the intervening year. I certainly agreed, but how? I didn't know how to find these jobs and there certainly weren't any connections I could leverage in my hometown. He asked around and located a faculty member at UK who could afford another RA and I was introduced to Dr. Dick Clayton. I was extremely fortunate to land in his Center for Prevention Research working for such an amazing person! To top off my good fortunte, I was invited to live with my Aunt and Uncle in Versailles, KY to avoid having to pay for an apartment. 

As this story relates to the advice I give to those seeking admission to grad school, I'll be the first to admit that there was a great deal of luck and privelege that fell on my lap and I truly don't know what might have happened without such the opportunity. It did set off a cascade of other events that provided a path to pursue my dreams. Beyond the direct full-time experience with research I got there, it provided another set of connections to build from as I considered my next set of applications that were due that fall. Becuase I was now in Kentucky, I was able to make connections to two local clinical psychology facutly -- Drs. Tom Widiger and Don Lynam -- at UK that turned out to be experts in understanding the boundary between normal and abnormal personality. This was well consistent with my interests and the sort of expertise that Dr. Whelan had advised me to pursue. I also was able to generate a list of faculty at other programs with a similar set of interests. 

During that time, I continued conversations with Dr. Ron Smith at UW and he advised that I might also want to apply to one of his former mentees, Dr. Thad Leffingwell, who had just joined the faculty at Oklahoma State. Both were great options as they could provide that training within the clinical psychology program. The result was that I not only had a better CV, but also a much more effective list of applications the 2nd time around. 

Interviews and Offers

This year the process played out much more positively for me. Although the dream role at Washington would not come to pass as funding for the program with athletics had not been renewed, I had other options. Early in the new year, I was contacted by Dr. Widiger at UK and invited to interview for their program. Not long after I was contacted by Dr. Leffingwell at Oklahoma State and invited to interview there. The one interesting wrinkle at Oklahoma State was that they required the GRE Psychology Subject Test. Thus, I was invited for the interview under the condition that I registered to take it at the next available offering. This was a ~$200 expense, in addition to the cost of travel to Oklahoma, but I viewed it as well worth it to explore this option. Ultimately, both of these interview experiences were fantastic and I could very much have seen myself at either school or working with either mentor. But ultimately, the details at Kentucky, including the fantastic fit with Dr. Widiger, was too good to pass up and I accepted their offer to get my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at UK!

Ultimately the experience I had at UK was phenomenal, gave me a chance to advance my research, and set the stage for the later positions and success I've had. Below are answers to a few follow-up questions that I get asked frequently when I share this story:

Q: "Do you ever regret not getting to do sport psychology?" 

A: The honest answer is that I've gotten to tie in the sport angle more than a few times in my career. During my grad training at UK, I got to do academic testing (IQ testing, etc) with a large number of varsity athletes, which was fun and interesting. I've also kept in touch with number of folks who are working with athletes, including some local sport psychologists who work with Purdue Athletics. I have collaborated with scientists from Gatorade on projects examining how their personality traits predict hydration behaviors during the season. So there have been several instances where I've been able to get that sort of content into my career. More broadly, though, the answer is that I love the work that I do. While it is true that I have not worked directly on the personality traits of athletes affect their peformance, my research is explicitly on how personality traits impact performance in life and so I feel like I'm answering the questions that interest me in a much broader way.

Q: "How did you know you wanted to do research and do you miss doing therapy?"

A: I was fortunate to get amazing training and experience doing therapy. I felt I was good at it and helped make a direct difference in people's lives. That is rewarding and I feel glad to use my skills to help people. However, I truly believe that in doing research I have the possibility to help people at a much broader level. If I am able to do work that improves how mental health conditions are defined, assessed and diagnosed in the real world then I can have an impact on many more lives than I ever could by doing therapy directly. That is the sort of thinking that guided my choice to do research for my career versus doing more direct therapy.